♪ you don't need no ticket ♪ just get on board >> god bless the jersey shore! [ applause ] >> bruce springsteen. to all the artists who joined us tonight, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. >> we have been jamming the lines. the folks at the red cross, if you couldn't get through, they will be at it all night.

keep calling. >> jersey strong, just keep your heart in it. we're coming back. new york, jersey, all the affected areas, you guys have been generous. >> good night, everybody. it is a real privilege to be able to do this show live just after the nbcuniversal telethon. thank you for staying with us. i want to say a personal thing. as for myself and those of us who work here on this show, we have been very lucky and very blessed this week as this disaster has unfolded in the communities we all live in. everyone on our staff is safe. nobody has been injured. our families are okay. a lot of us have property damage. almost all of us have been living out of suitcases, but we are all safe and that's what's important. i want to thank everybody who has been asking, you're all nice. i want to show you one thing

though. look at this video. this was taken this morning by our friend jessica rodriguez who is a producer on this show. most of these nights, she would be responsible for making sure this video made it on air, but today she was at home in new york on long island because this is the street where jessica lives. this is what her neighborhood looks like as of today. four days after the storm made landfall. she was at home today working to assess the damage, clean up her flood-damaged home and help her neighbors. while she was at home, a new york congressional delegation made her way down the block. she was wearing her staff sweatshirt when a senator came up to talk to her. this little flip cam video, this is the best way we know to show you how we all feel about this story that we are in the middle

of. this disaster just took lives and uprooted lives and ruined a lot over a huge area affecting millions of americans. in a big area of the east coast, but also really specifically in this one part that we all live in, which is the most densely-populated place in this country. which means we're forced here in this particular part of america to be interconnected and interdependent, to know thy neighbor because thy neighbor is close to thee. it's part of the reason you live and work in a place like this. bestrive to take a fair view of what's happening in the world to do our best job at communicating useful information to you about the world we are in, but if you have been sensing some personal urgency in our telling this particular story, it's just because we cannot hide it it. it's true. which is why i say it's a pr privilege to do this show this night following the big telethon to raise funds for the hurricane

sandy relief effort. i may never endorse candidates, but i'm allowed to tell you how wholeheartedly i endorse this message that if you have the means to do so, even at a small level, if you have the means to do so, you should donate to help the relief efforts for this disaster. if you want to donate by phone, the number is easy to remember. 1-800-help-now. online, you can go to redcross right lane. or you can donate $10 by texting to 90999. when the power came back on in parts of lower manhattan tonight, late this afternoon and early tonight, you could hear the cheering from the lower east side of manhattan. sweet relief, it's been a long week. there was some cheering here at our offices in midtown when we saw the live feed come through. tlougt the night, the lights have been coming on in our homes as well, which is a cause for e

relief and lots of gratitude and lots of worry and consternation over the places that are still a long way out from coming back. a point of personal privilege, if you have not donated, think about whether you can. 1-800-help-now. i will leave it there. a lot to get to tonight. the new york city marathon was cancelled. 22 million gallons of gas will be distributed. and by the way, there's a presidential election in four days and there's news about that too. that's all hay add in next hour. we'll be right back. i realize that retirement benefits aren't exciting to most people, but i like to think that they're interesting to the people at my company. actually, they might not even be that interesting to them. but this is for them and their future. and that's why it's important.

okay, i'm going to take that as a "thank you, you rock!" who matters most to you says the most about you. massmutual has helped american businesses offer sound retirement plan solutions for generations. wears off. [ female announcer ] stop searching and start repairing. eucerin professional repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com. this is hayden. he's five years that's elizabeth.d. and that's skyler... and his mom, nancy. they're just a few of the californians who took it on themselves to send you a message about what they need to restore years of cuts to their schools. prop thirty-eight.

thirty-eight raises billions in new revenue - bypasses sacramento and sends every k through 12 dollar straight to our local schools... every school. for them. for all of us. vote yes on thirty-eight. it's now four days until the election and we have reached the point where the campaigns both start pounding their chests and say we're going to win, we're sure of it.

i'm not sure why they do this other than the fact that trash talk is always fun in sports and in politics. but maybe there's a sense of people who haven't decided even at this late point in the game will want to side with the guy that's going to be the winner. but regardless, both sides do it every year. in the last few days before the vote in particular. that's why you're seeing david axelrod making a bet that if president obama does not win michigan and minnesota and pennsylvania, he will shave off his mustache. he's betting his face. that's how confident he is. because this is the time in the campaign when you're supposed to project confidence. on the republican side, it's been a little more complicated. after a bad week of polling for mitt romney, top staffers held a

conference call with reporters that enumerated their reasons why they see mitt romney as a shoe in despite the polling. they suggested their secret sauce that's more important than the polling is that mr. romney is winning independents. so there. romney has this thing in the bag. carl rove, for the republicans this year, he took to "the wall street journal" this week to patiently explain to the people who don't understand that these numbers that look so bad for mr. romney do not matter or they are wrong. or they are wrong and they don't noe matter. because he says democrats are not winning early voting by enough. and he says the polls make assumptions about turnout that he describes as absurd. it also describes some stuff that makes him believe romney is going to win like crowd size and closing arguments. that shows that mitt romney is totally going to win this thing.

both are trying to convince the country it's obvious they are going to win. it's worth listening to the arguments and checking to see if the arguments are based in good sense. but honestly, it's also worth recognizing that every campaign on both sides does this every time. for example, here is how this particular phenomenon looked the day before the election in 2008 when this bragging that we get every year was being done by a john mccain republican surrogate named mitt romney. >> inside a campaign, what do you get on the inside that we don't get on the outside because you're doing your own polling? >> you see the widest array of polls. you look at mason dixon that cake out yesterday. you take that apart, it's close to the internal polls. it shows that john mccain is leading in the states that he's got to lead in. we're going to pick up

pennsylvania. we have a good shot in virginia, new hampshire, new mexico, nevada, that's the pathway to victory for john mccain. we're excited. we're hoping to see a lot of people out there in chicago on election night with barack obama experiencing a long, cold night, that john mccain won. >> it's nice he wishes physical discomfort on his enemies. but notice what exactly he was so confidently predicting there. the day before the election in 2008, it was mitt romney. these were his predictions for states that john mccain was definitely going to win. >> john mccain is leading in the states he's got to lead in like ohio and florida. we'll pick up pennsylvania. we think we have a good shot at virginia, new hampshire, new mexico, nevada. that's the pathway to victory for john mccain. >> e see how all those states were blue? his confident predictions that john mccain was going to win all

those states in 2008 were wrong in every single instance. they lost every single one of those states. even though it seemed like he was going to win all of those states the day before the election. he didn't say like he felt they were going to win. he said they have the polling data that showed they were going to win and they did not win in any of those states. this is just part of the way the game is played. it's just bluffing. and that is important context for understanding what's going on in the last four days of the campaign. there are patterns to how presidential elections end. some of the same stuff happens every four years. specifically, in 1992, the republican candidate was poppy bush. he went and campaigned in pennsylvania. and then the next day, he lost pennsylvania. the next election, 1996, bob dole. right before the election, bob dole went and campaigned in pennsylvania. then bob dole lost pennsylvania. in 2004 the republican was

george bush and the day before the election he went and campaigned in pennsylvania. and the next day, george bush lost pennsylvania. last time around as well the sunday before the election, there's john mccain campaigning in pennsylvania. and then john mccain loses pennsylvania. right before the election, you can set your watch by it. the republican presidential contender will go and campaign in pennsylvania. and every year the media responds by saying, wow the republican is going to pennsylvania. maybe the republicans are going to win pennsylvania this year. does this mean the republicans are planning on winning pennsylvania this year e. and the republicans say, yes, we're going there because we're going to win pennsylvania and they lose it every year. the reason they do this every year is because they want to be seen as super confident. they want to be seen as so confident they are expanding the map. they want to create the impression that they are going to win big. they don't need to go to the so-called battleground states. they have locked all those up.

they have the meat and potatoes. they are going for gravy. they go to exotic states because they are going to win those states too. it's going to be a landslide. it's trash talk. you can understand why they are doing this, but there's no reason to pretend that it's unprecedented and there's no reason to write down the spin instead of checking the facts about whether their argument actually makes sense. checking the facts is easy to do. look at the polls in pennsylvania. there have been two dozen polls in pennsylvania since august first. of those two dozen polls, of those 24 polls, how many does president obama lead in? 24 of the 24. every single one. and look at the rest of mr. romney's campaign schedule. he's taking the one trip to pennsylvania that republicans always take. but other than that, he was in ohio and wisconsin today. he was scheduled to be in new hampshire, iowa and colorado in the final days. and he just spent the last

couple days in florida and virginia. that means the map is not exp d expandiexpan expanding. no the if you can't afford to walk away tr dwrr battle ground states. he's still flogging it out where he has to win. all of this we're going to win stuff is a fake out, it's a bluff, it's trash talk. and there's nothing wrong with it. it happens every year. you should know it's a dependable part of the end of presidential campaigns. but every once in awhile at the end of a presidential campaign, this expected faint, this attempt at a fake out that everybody knows is coming, every once in awhile it's revealed as a fake out. every once in awhile you get from the campaign an admission that they actually know they are going to lose. at least they know they might lose. at least they are making plans based on an expectation they could lose. and when that happens, we know from insiders on campaigns past

that it's very unsettling to the campaign and makes everybody upset and hope people do not notice it happened. that's what happened in 2008. it was right before the election and pro-palin conservatives started talking to the press publically floating her plans for after the election. not as vice president, but after the election after john mccain and sarah palin lost. their plans for her were published by "the new york times" seven days before election day. if mccain loses, she could emerge as a standard barer for the movement in 2012. her prospects in or out of government are among conversations among conservative leaders. she's making sure she's well-positioned for the future if they lose. that was a week before election day in 2008. sarah palin's plans for saving her own skin once they lost the election were being leaked by her allies. and we know from people inside that campaign it caused enormous tension inside the mccain/palin camp.

so imagine how this went over this week in the romney campaign. publically, the romney campaign is on their we're going to win tour. we're even going to win pennsylvania tour. that's what they are saying publically. that's their public message. meanwhile the associated press publishes a story that's eerily similar to the sarah palin's post-election defeat plan. this time it's paul ryan whose future is being leaked about by his supporters who are fairly, clearly assuming that they are about to lose and they need to think of something else for paul ryan to do because he's not going to be business i si as vice president. publically ryan and allies maintain that momentum is behind the romney/ryan ticket, but his biggest boosters realize he can write his own ticket. these allies spoke on the condition to discuss private

proposals they were preparing for him. if romney lose, ryan will be seen as a white house contender in 2016 just like sarah palin was in 2012. for the next few years, democrats would lay traps forcing them to take sides on measures to come back to haunt him. that's why ryan's biggest boosters are considering why it wouldn't be better for paul ryan to resign from the house. he could write a book. or he could teach at a university. days before the election, paul ryan's supporters are leaking their plans to the press for what they want paul ryan to do since he's not going to be vice president. what they want paul ryan to do once he and mitt romney lose the election next week. i sort of can't believe it didn't get more attention yesterday afternoon. it is also the purest and most direct rebuttal of that campaign's own rather heroic

efforts to project some super human confidence about how much they think they are going to win on tuesday. joining us is a man who is in the business of knowing who is going to win, nate silver, for "the new york times." he's the who author of "the signal and the the noise." thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel. >> a lot of headlines say that since mitt romney is going to pennsylvania, that must mean that pennsylvania is in play. from the numbers, do you believe pennsylvania is in play? >> you had the list of 24 polls and none had romney ahead. some were done that had romney up a couple points there, but no public pollster has had him with a lead all year. it's not just that obama is up there, but it's a state where it's been stable and consistent in the polling. i think it might be more in play because i don't think they are conceding ohio. they need a better plan b.

>> is there a famous circumstance in which all the polls all yearlong point in one direction and a partisan poll correctly predicted the results? >> that poll is almost always going to be wrong. especially when there's a consensus of 20 polls. maybe in a house race where the public polls aren't as good. but the public polling is pretty good. we know what the party bases are and where they live. this is a state that teases republicans where they can get up to 49% pretty easily, but it's hard to get to 50%. unless because of the hurricane and where the power outages might be, that could affect thi things. but apart from that, it's a sign of a campaign that doesn't like the electoral map very much. >> what about the montra we have been hearing on the right. we were hearing the idea that mr. romney has momentum heading into the election day.

you shouldn't look at the raw numbers. you should appreciate there's momentum movement in the numbers that indicates he's going to win. how do you assess that? >> today was proof he does not have momentum, there were 19 polls released today in battleground states. and mitt romney led in zero of those polls. there were two ties and obama led in 17. that's not what we were seeing two weeks ago where romney pulled ahead in virginia and colorado and florida and had drown ohio down to a one-point lead. if anything, obama has momentum. he was declared the winner of the final two debates. i'm not sure how the hurricane is playing for him, but his numbers ticked up. that's why the states that seem toss uppy seem like they are more firmly in the president's favor. >> let me ask you, and i didn't warn you i was going to ask you this, but you have been the subject of a lot of criticism in this last week in particular as

if the polling model that you built at "the new york times" and the way you explain the polling is somehow biassed or wrong or evil. i feel like you are waging a one-man war against e pneumonia rossty in explaining how polling works. how has the week been? >> it's been a trip where you become a subject of conversation yourself and there's this celebrity level attached to it that's new for me e. but there are other websites that do the same thing that we do. they all show basically the same thing. there's no way to slice and dice the data in ohio or iowa or wisconsin right now and say that romney is winning there. in fact, the polls would have to mess up by quite a bit for that to occur. there's years that's happened. but we're now in the phase where it's no longer a question of who is ahead in the electoral

college so much as will the polls have a bad year and they could, but that's why you see some conservatives now are no longer bothering to say that we're winning in these states. they are saying that the polling is wrong. usually it's wishful thinking. >> you're a man at the center of the storm dm n which you did not expect to be. thank you for being racial and patient throughout it. >> thank you, rachel. his book is callinged "the signal and the noise." some things do not change. bruce springsteen will always be awesome at benefit concerts. david axelrod will probably always have a mustache. and voting in florida will always be a mess. apparently. this year it's already to a degree. that's just ahead. ♪

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september 10th, 2002. florida voters go to the polls for a primary. what they find is a mess. fancy new voting machines do not work. poll workers do not show up. polling places do not open

because voting that day is hard the lines are surprisingly long. florida's governor at the time is jeb bush. he orders the polls to stay open for two extra hours to help everybody that wants to vote vote. that was in 2002. in 2008 florida sees epic lines at the polls. even in the days before that during the time for early voting. people waited through lines that stretched through three city blocks. this is what it looks like in 2008 even during early voting. florida's governor during that election was also a republican, charlie crist and he declared a state of emergency at the polls. he ordered the polls to stay open longer so people can vote. he says i have a responsibility to ensure that the maximum number of citizens can participate in the process and every person can exercise the right to vote. the obama campaign thanks the

republican governor when he did that and then with a boost from early voting, democrat barack obama won the state of florida and the presidency. oops. last year florida's new republican governor rick scott decided he was not going to make that mistake again. rather than expanding voting, the new one decided he would cut the days for early voting almost in half in order to make voting harder. look. at least that's how it works. long, long, long lines for early voting in polls places across florida except this year it's long lines with no relief in sight. we have been getting pictures ever since early voting started in the state. this is how democracy works in florida this year. look at this. get in line. wait and wait. wait an hour. wait four hours. wait five hours.

yesterday florida democrats and the nonpartisan group the league of women voters asked the governor to do something about the long lines. they asked him to add a day of voting to open the polls on the last sunday before the election when many african-americans usually plan to car pool after church to go vote. the governor said no. florida's governor said, "early voting will end on saturday night, but i want everybody to get out to vote." he wants everybody to get out and vote. just get in line. let's see how long we can make you wait. get in that line going out the door, around the block, governor scott is looking at five-hour waits for his constituents already for the people he was elected to serve. and he has no sign of any desire to fix it. listen. the more opportunity people have to vote, the more likely they are to vote. high turn out favors democrats. low turn out, favors republicans. this is not rocket science.

to the extent that voting in florida is a debacle, it's one made by design. the ballot in florida is ten pages long. and with fewer days to vote, you get really long lines. but that's the way it goes in florida now. leading up to the election, florida republicans cut the time for early voting in half. so now floridians stand in long lines. they pass new restriction on registering voters so thousands fewer new voters signed up. and the governor has tried to purge the voter rolls. in south florida and palm beach county, 30,000 ballots were printed wrong. clerks have been copying what the voters marked on to new ballots that can fit into the tabula tabulating machines. dozens asked for absentee ball the lots and still haven't gotten them because they screwed

up the ballots. the situation is worse in broward county where people have waited for weeks for absentee ballots. you can say that florida's election is another debacle in the making were it not already a debacle right now. and it is. joining us is joy reid. she's an msnbc contributor who has been reporting on the election mess in florida. thank you for being here. it's nice to have you here. >> great to be here. all florida. florida will not be moved aside by ohio. >> we believe in the power of florida here because florida has demonstrated its power. in terms of what i just summarized there, does it strike you in terms of your latest reporting as what's most important to keep an eye on? and what's yourlating reporting on the other issues? >> absolutely, rachel. in the last couple hours, i made

a couple phone calls and discovered that everything you said is accurate with one more county. miami-dade is also having issues with people who requested absentee ballots. some of these people requested that ballot a month ago. they requested it the beginning of october. and still haven't gotten them. if it's not returned by 7:00 p.m. on tuesday, in the a office on that day, it won't count. then the next wrinkle is that people who ordered their absentee ballots but decided to show up at a poll and try to vote will be made to vote on provilgsal ballots because there's no way to verify that person didn't mail if an absentee ballot. and florida doesn't have a strong record of counting provilgs ballots. >> why does the government not do more to make voting easier? we saw rick scott take action here more aggressively than other republican legislatures did. he ordered that early voting be cut.

has there been any argument from what he's done? >> no. you talked about charlie crist earlier and the fact he signed that executive order extending vo voting hours. that was the beginning of the end of charlie crist's tenure in the party. because republicans in the state blamed crist for barack obama winning the state. so when i spoke with the former head of the republican florida in florida who is in his own world of trouble over charges about some illegal money things he was doing, but when he was running the party, he told me that republican consultants came to him and said we want to craft a bill to get rid of early voting or severely cut it because in the worlds of the consultants, all it does is bring every african-american out from under a rock and get them to vote for democrats. it doesn't help us. so the republican legislature which in 2010 became more tea party and conservative, there's no margin in it for them to

increase access to in-person early voting. what they did is passed a law that didn't touch absentee voting, which republicans tend to dominate in, but severely limited the early vote. so there were 96 hours this year total to vote. there were 120 hours in 2008. and already in the state, 3.46 million people have voted. when you looked at the numbers, that's almost as many votes as barack obama got by himself. in the last presidential election, almost half of the people who voted voted early. this is really a problem. >> this is a problem and this is a problem not looking ahead to election day. it's a problem already in the way that it's affecting people who are trying to early vote. i feel like i'm not the dredge report and i'm not a website, but if i could put a siren over my head, i would. >> i'd wear one too. >> we'll have to get them.

joy, it's great to have you here. thank you. >> thank you. one more big story for you tonight about something that is essentially trying to be disappeared down the memory hole. this is that's refusing to go down the memory hole even though they are trying to shove it there. that's coming up. [ male announcer ] kids grow up in no time... marie callender's turkey breast with stuffing is a great reason to slow down. creamy mash potatoes, homestyle gravy and 320 calories. marie callender's. it's time to savor.

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because i'm raising two girls on my own. i'll worry about the economy more than a few times before they're grown. but it's for them, so i've found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. massmutual is owned by our policyholders so they matter most to us. massmutual. we'll help you get there.

a flurry of new polling from the swing states today. all these polls are just released today. in colorado president obama up by four. in iowa, president obama up by four. in wisconsin president obama up by seven points. in new hampshire the president leading in six points. in ohio president obama leading in three points. in virginia president obama leading by one point. in florida president obama leading by two points.

one state that's not a swing state this year but that president obama made into a swing state in 2008 is the great state of indiana. indiana flipped from red to blue in the presidential contest. president obama is not necessarily expected to pull off the same thing this year in indiana. but this year there's a really hot race in indiana in the senate. after a tea party primary cost senator richard lugar his senate job, the republican candidate in indiana ended up being the guy on the left side of your screen richard mourdock. he's up against joe donnelly. since he made his rape comment at a debate a few weeks ago, in very, very, very, very red state indiana, the republican candidate is now behind in that state senate race. he's losing the race by double

digits. here's the interesting thing about that poll to. it's a poll in indiana, which almost never happens. it's really weird, but nobody nationally never knows what's going on in indiana politics because they don't poll in indiana. in indiana, it's illegal to make automated calls for telemarketing purposes and for public opinion surveys like polling. you can't use an auto dialing device unless the subscriber has consented to being contacted or a live operator gets on the line and gets consent that way. since it make s it hard and expen expensi expensive, there's little polling in indiana. but while we're on the subject of weird details, check out this ballot in north carolina. it's more than a dozen states where they have straight ticket voting. they say everybody with an r next to their name, that's who i'm voting for. i want all the republicans or

all the democrats. but there's a bizarre catch to straight ticket voting in north carolina. north carolina is the only state where voting for a straight ticket does not include the presidential race. so you have to vote for the straight ticket and then in addition to that, you also have to cast another vote for president. if you just vote straight ticket democratic, you do not cast a boat voet for barack obama for president. you have to do that separately in addition. so it's not really straight ticket voting. it's straight ticket plus the president voting. okay. i said weird details. here's something weirder. this is a democrat in the governor's race. he leads in the polls by more than 30 points. but that may not be enough. the vermont state constitution requires a candidate for governor to get 50% plus one vote.

so even though he's leading, he has four opponents. so if those four opponents get a combined 50% of the vote, the governor will not be reelected no matter how big the margin he wins by. in that case with nobody getting 50%, it's the state legislature that picks the governor. that's happened recently. some of the most interesting still undecided races from yesterday's elections after the governor's seat. this afternoon nbc news declaring peter shumlin the winner. what's interesting about that is that even though the democrat won, he did not get 50% of the vote. under vermont's state rules, that means technically the legislature picks who wins the race. two months after that, the vermont legislature did what vermonters had already done. they picked peter shumlin to be governor. which means 28 people in the

legislature voted to elect somebody who the people of vermont did not vote for. a gentle reminder that states run the elections. they are governed by weird rules and worth whatever efforts it takes. it's worth filling out two bubbles. i'm looking at you, north carolina. think twice. with occasional irregularity, things your body doesn't use could be lingering in your system, but activia has been shown in clinical studies to help with slow intestinal transit. ♪ activia. wears off. [ female announcer ] stop searching and start repairing. eucerin professional repair moisturizes while actually repairing very dry skin. the end of trial and error has arrived. try a free sample at eucerinus.com.

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he is a true american hero. but allen became my hero for the battle he fought day after day after day. to get his life back.

hahahaha! hooohooo, hahaha! this is awesome! folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico sure are happy. i'd say happier than a slinky on an escalator. get happy. get geico. melons!!! oh yeah!! well that was uncalled for. folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico sure are happy.

how happy, ronny? happier than gallagher at a farmers' market. get happy. get geico. the question for this election in my view is this. do you want to stay on the same course we're on, or do you want real change? because we represent real change. paul ryan and i plan on putting in place real change from day one. accomplishing real change is something i don't just talk about. it's something i've done. the question of this election comes down to this. do you want more of the same or do you want real change? and we pick real change. >> spare change? real change. that was mitt romney's closing argument today in wisconsin and ohio. a vote for me is a vote for real change. and tonight, just outside cincinnati, the romney campaign attempting to underscore that message by holding a big mega

rally in westchester ohio. featuring nearly 100 governors, senators, keng men and other republican luminaries to talk about the real change you would get if you elect mitt romney. so who did he enlist to sell this message of what real change he's offering america? the headliners were george w. bush's secretary of state, george w. bush's labor secretary, the governor and current speaker of the house. mitt romney, change you can believe in if you really liked george w. bush and if you like the current republican congress. then we're the kind of real change we're looking for. who cast this thing, the democrats? one of the reasons that the message of real change resonated

back in 2008 because the country at large had ceased to be delighted by the george w. bush administration. and it wasn't just the war in iraq or, or, or, or. it was stuff like this. this is the u.s. state department's annual report on global terrorism in 2003. every year they would put together a report like this detailing accidents of terrorism around the world. and the next report after this one, showed that despite the bush administration's claims that we were winning the war on terror, despite the constant claims, the number of terrorist attacks had gone up to its highest level in the two decades the state department had been publishing this report. what was the bush administration's solution to that problem? the solution was to stop publishing the report. the bush administration just eliminated that annual report

once it included something very politically inconvenient. the bush administration had a habit of doing this. if you don't like the data, get rid of the data. earlier they were face wd a new report from their own education department showing that charter school kids were falling behind public school kids. how do you deal with your own administration's data on underperforming charter schools? you cut back on the data that you collect about charter schools. the bush administration just announced they would be collecting less data going forward. in 2003, after the bush administration labor department report detailed mass layoffs in the manufacturing sector, the bush administration announced they were going to stop publishing information about mass layoffs. if we get rid of the data pointing to a problem, maybe the data wouldn't look so bad. the obvious move is to get rid

of it. this was a hall mark of the george w. bush administration and it appears to be one of the things that mr. romney liked very much about the george w. bush administration. it at least appears to be one of the things that he's promising to bring back. you don't like the data presented? kill the report. after the totally unimpeachable ly did a report concluded that romney's plan would be great for rich people and hurt everybody else, the response to that was to go guns blazing against the center. you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. last month after the bureau of labor statistics announced the unemployment rate was going down, the right started attacking the bureau of labor statistics as if they were the problem because they said the unemployment rate was going down. it used to be that democrats and republicans would argue about how best to deal with some

factual things, some problem facing the national. now republicans do it differently. they do it differently than everybody else. this is not a mirror image problems on both sides. they refuse to acknowledge factual thing. they are still doing, it was brought to a whole new level last week when it was revealed that a nonpartisan tax report was withdrawn by a federal agency because republicans protested its findings. the federal agency in question here is the congressional resource service. they're kind of the gold standard. congress's internal think tank. members of congress have a question about policy or issue, they look into it for them and they issue a report in response to a member of congress asking for that report. the congressional research service is as nonpa parpartisan gets in washington.

and a little more than a month ago, they issued a report on tax policy. they found there is no connection between lowering the tax rates on millionaires and billionaires and creating economic growth. there's no evidence that if you cut taxes on the rich that that makes the economy grow. that's a problem because that is essentially mitt romney's whole reason for living. this is the republican party's economic reason for existing. if you cut taxes on the rich, the job creators, that will jump start the economy. this is the whole basis of the party' economic philosophy. this is why congressional republicans pledge their first born children to a man named grover. and here comes this highly respected agency that says it turns out the whole thing is bunk. giving rich people a tax break doesn't help the economy but it sure does help rich people. what do you do if you're the

republican party? you pressure the agency into burying the report which sp exactly what republicans in congress did this fall. the "new york times" is reporting that the congressional research service quietly withdrew their entire report. reportedly against the advice of their own economics experts. this is amazing, right? if a report tells you something you do not want to hear, get rid of the report. especially if that report is coming out on the eve of a big election and it debunks your candidate's whole economic argument. luckily, breaking news, the report does still exist. you can find it right now. you can read it right now. it's not written very long, you can find it at nanoblog.com and dls nothing that republicans can do to stop that. we will see you again on sunday night.